On 6 September 2024, the first exhibition opened at the Hermitage–Eurasia Centre. It is devoted to portraiture of the 1830s–50s, a period often referred to as the “Age of Briullov”.
The display comprises 58 paintings by native and foreign-born artists who worked in Russia at that time. Twenty-three works are being exhibited for the first time, many with fresh attributions and dating. This exhibition is a homage of sorts to Karl Briullov in the year of the 225th anniversary of the artist’s birth.
The Hermitage collection contains six pieces by Karl Briullov dating from various stages in his artistic career: from a sketch for his programme in pursuit of Large Gold Medal of the Academy of Arts to works from the 1840s. The exhibition presents to the general public for the first time his Portrait of Prince Frederick of Württemberg: for exactly a century (from 1924) this masterpiece was kept in the museum stocks as a work by Adolphe Ladurner, but the results of recent research made it possible to definitively establish Briullov’s authorship.
The artist maintained an extremely high standard of execution, while his works stand out as memorable images, characteristic of their time. They harmoniously combine decorativeness, virtuosity and illusionism – the chief tendencies in painting during the middle decades of the 19th century.
“This is an exhibition about the Hermitage. Tens of portraits bear the faces of people who did visit, or may have visited, it in the time of Karl Briullov. There are military men, civil servants, businessmen, society ladies and their daughters – a diverse world and important component part of Russia. They wear the clothing of a different era, but their bright faces are, thank goodness, the same as can be seen today,” Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, commented.
Karl Briullov was an absolute hero and the foremost artist of the 1830s – a time that accentuated a striving after fresh content and new form. The “Age of Briullov” also gave the world other worthy portraitists, each of whom developed one or other tendency characteristic of their day.
The exhibition curator is Yury Yuryevich Gudymenko, Candidate of Art Studies, leading researcher in the State Hermitage’s Department of the History of Russian Culture.
A scholarly illustrated catalogue in Russian has been published for the exhibition: Karl Briullov i ego epokha v proizvedeniiakh zhivopisi iz sobraniia Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha. The catalogue is preceded by greetings from Denis Vladimirovich Pasler, Governor of Orenburg Region, and a foreword by Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, and Yury Eduardovich Komlev, Director of the Orenburg Regional Museum of Fine Arts. The introductory texts are by Yury Yuryevich Gudymenko.
The exhibition can be visited at the Hermitage–Eurasia Centre until 15 March 2025.
